London, UK –Bloc Ventures(Bloc), the venture capital company focused on early stage European deep technology investment, announces the appointment of Michael Dimelow as Chief Commercial Officer.

Michael is an experienced technology investor and corporate development executive. As co-founder of Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV), he acted as its CIO, deploying over £85 million. During his tenure at ADV, Michael helped build a portfolio of over 30 companies which included B-secur, Push Dr, UIPath and deployed fund of fund investments in seven funds such as Entrepreneur First, IQ Capital and Seedcamp.

Before ADV, Michael spent 15 years in senior leadership positions developing two of the UK’s most progressive deep technology businesses; ARM Holdings and TTP Communications. During his career, Michael has led teams responsible for deploying in excess of $500m in deep technology businesses, through acquisition and minority investment positions.

Michael’s appointment follows Bloc’s successful equity raise in July which brought the total capital raised to just under £30 million. With further equity raises expected in 2021, they join to add further expertise and bandwidth to Bloc’s already successful operational model.

Bruce Beckloff, co-Founder and CEO of Bloc said:”We are delighted to have Michael join the Bloc team. Having worked with Michael for many years at ARM, his insight and sector expertise will prove invaluable as we continue to build deep technology companies of global scale. Having Michael on the team will add further depth and skills as we deploy our hands-on, active approach to working our portfolio companies. His joining, and our most recent Series B round completion, underpins Bloc’s continued momentum and the confidence that we and our investors have in our growth plans.”

Michael Dimelow added: “Investing in deeptech businesses is hard to get right, it helps if you understand the journey that the founders are about to go on. Bloc understands that journey and brings a wealth of product, technology and business building expertise, combined with a permanent capital structure. A patient approach to venture investing is unique within the UK and Europe and enables Bloc to take a long-term view with the founders weback. Funding the next wave of technology innovation and helping to shape Bloc Ventures long term growth was an opportunity too good to be missed.”

–ENDS-

Paytia, a telephone payment compliance service, has closed its pre-Series A funding round on £1.2m, which was led by Bloc Ventures.

With the capital injection, Paytia will increase its operational capability, increase the size of its team and build new products which will complement its existing offering.

Founded in 2016, the FinTech leverages technology to ensure customers are protected and remain in control of their card data throughout any customer not present payment transactions. The cloud-native platform provides businesses with scalable means to take card not present payments from customers and meet compliance with PCI-DSS standards, without breaching regulations.

See full article here: https://member.fintech.global/2020/10/27/paytia-closes-its-pre-series-a-as-it-looks-to-boost-telephone-payment-compliance/

Today, 5G-ENCODE, a pioneering project that aims to make the benefits of 5G a reality for UK manufacturers, announces the switch on of its Phase One Industrial Private 4G Network at the world leading National Composites Centre (NCC), to establish a baseline for existing technology. This comes ahead of its Phase Two Industrial Private 5G Network, which will go live in 2021.

See full article here: https://www.5g-encode.com/government-backed-5g-encode-launches-phase-one-network

 EVRYTHNG, the Product Cloud managing digital identities for the world’s consumer products, today announced it has partnered with Result Group of Companies, Australia’s premier supplier of innovative product packaging solutions, to help brands deliver on consumer expectations for transparency, authenticity and personalized consumer experiences. 

Teaming to accelerate the digitization of products in Australia, the EVRYTHNG Product Cloud™ links every product item to its Active Digital Identity™ on the web—joining up item-level data at every point in a product’s journey from manufacturing to consumer interaction. Digitized products provide visibility, validation and real-time intelligence as well as connect directly with people.

See full article here: https://evrythng.com/evrythng-gets-result-in-australia/

 EVRYTHNG, the Product Cloud managing digital identities for the world’s consumer products, today announced it has closed a $10 million further funding round, bringing its total capital raised to $60 million. EVRYTHNG will use the new investment to accelerate its global growth, expand its product capabilities that provide end-to-end supply chain traceability and visibility and machine-learning applications for brand integrity, and add to its team. A pioneer of the internet of things for consumer products and a World Economic Forum Global Innovator, EVRYTHNG works with global consumer brands that include Ralph Lauren, PUMA, P&G, Moët Hennessy and Anheuser-Busch InBev, among many others.

See full article here: https://evrythng.com/evrythng-raises-10-million-bringing-total-funding-to-60-million/

AccelerComm – The Southampton University spinout supercharging 5G, satellite and other wireless communications with IP which increases spectrum efficiency and reduces latency – has raised £5.8m in Series A funding in a round led by IQ Capital alongside existing investors Bloc Ventures and the IP Group. The funding will be used to expand the current team, drive US and global expansion, and develop the technology further as demand for the company’s cutting-edge digital signal processing IP grows among mobile operators, telecoms equipment vendors, satellite operators and connected device manufacturers.

See full article here: https://www.accelercomm.com/news/accelercomm-secures-5.8m-series-a-funding-from-iq-capital-bloc-ventures-and-ip-group

 EVRYTHNG, the Product Cloud managing digital identities for the world’s consumer products, today announced it has partnered with Minet Technologies, Israel’s procurement and supply chain leader, to bring the EVRYTHNG Product Cloud™ to consumer goods manufacturers and brands in the region. EVRYTHNG makes it possible for manufacturers and brands to deliver end-to-end supply chain visibility and transparency into every product’s journey from the factory to the consumer to re-sale or recycle.

The first partnership of its kind in Israel, together EVRYTHNG and Minet Technologies offer Israeli consumer goods companies an end-to-end product identity solution for supply chain, product authenticity and marketing applications. 

See full article here: https://evrythng.com/evrythng-minet-partnership/

• Round was solely filled by existing shareholders
• Deal flow pipeline very robust and accelerating
• Funds will enable further follow on portfolio investments into the portfolio and opportunistic near-term additions
• Additional fund raising targeted in 2021

London, UK – Bloc Ventures (Bloc), the venture capital company focused on early stage European deep technology investment, has completed a £5 million equity raise that follows on from its Series B round of £15 million in January 2020.

This brings the total funds raised by Bloc in its Series B round to £20 million, with a total raised to date to just under £30 million.

Over 60% of Bloc existing shareholders participated in the extension including IPGL Limited, Michael Spencer’s investment company, Stuart Roden, and Bloc’s co-Founder and Chairman, Paul Roy and Bloc’s Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Griffin.

Bloc was founded by CEO Bruce Beckloff, CTO David Leftley, technology industry veterans from ARM and Vodafone respectively, to fill the gap in Europe for expert led funding of early-stage deep technology companies. Andrew Griffin, former managing director of European technology equity research for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, joined as CFO in early 2019.

Despite the disruptions to global businesses as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, Bloc has maintained  very robust deal flow pipeline, reflecting the inherent resilience and structural benefits of deep technology in sectors including high performance computing, wireless communications, networking infrastructure, and the Internet of Things . The extension will enable Bloc to complete additional near-term follow-on rounds and continue to scale its team to capture the European deep tech opportunity.

Commenting on this announcement, Bruce Beckloff, Co-Founder and CEO of Bloc said: 

“The main driver for deep technology, irrespective of any crisis, remains the need for service providers to deliver more for less year-on-year.  This is only possible through continual adoption of new technology. In this crisis, demand for compute and connectivity, which serve as the core target markets for Bloc’s investment strategy, has significantly increased with the demands of a remote workforce.”

Andrew Griffin, Chief Financial Officer, added: “Despite the broader slowdown in start-up funding due to coronavirus, the first half of 2020 was a record investment period for Bloc. We are in a great position to support our companies as they drive the technology that will meet infrastructure demands which COVID-19 has accelerated. We look forward to using these additional funds to further scale the next generation of European deep technology companies.”

Notes to Editors

About Bloc Ventures

Bloc Ventures is a permanent venture capital company providing expert-led funding of European deep technology. Bloc is passionate about supporting and growing the next generation of European technology businesses at the forefront of telecommunications and computing. It provides its shareholders with access to the exciting, high growth early-stage European deep-technology landscape using an approach that lowers the risk of crystallising returns. 

The Bloc team has a tight complementary mix of technology, commercialisation and finance expertise borne out of extensive careers in the technology industry, including many years in corporate venture capital and M&A at Vodafone and ARM. They apply expertise via detailed due diligence pre-investment, and a hands-on collaborative approach with portfolio companies to scale them rapidly post-investment.  

Bloc serves as the catalyst for its portfolio companies, moving them from early-stage to growth businesses and driving substantial value-creation. This positions Bloc as the preferred investor partner for tech businesses. 

www.blocventures.com   

For further enquiries:

Bloc Ventures

Andrew Griffin (CFO) +44 20 3826 7100

pr@blocventures.com

Powerscourt Group (Public Relations)

James White + 44 (0) 7855 432 699

Jessica Hodgson +44 (0) 7561 424788

bloc@powerscourt-group.com

OMass Therapeutics are an Oxford biotechnology company spun out of Oxford University harnessing native mass spectrometry and other biophysical technologies to drive drug discovery in high definition. The company’s suite of proprietary technologies delivers superior resolution to traditional pharmacology assays enabling a clearer, more detailed picture of how a putative ligand engages a protein target, assessing binding and function in parallel. The company is building a pipeline of small molecule therapeutics to bring life-changing benefits to patients suffering from immunology and genetic disorders. OMass is backed by Syncona Ltd, Oxford Sciences Innovation and Oxford University.

See full article here: https://yellowdog.co/case_studies/accelerating-drug-discovery-omass-therapeutics/